It's Story Time!

Everyone has a story... what's yours?  No, not the one you tell everyone else, the script that you've practiced and told so often that you don't hear it any more, aren't moved by it any more.  I'm talking about the story  you tell yourself.  The story that defines who you believe yourself to be, the story that has you believing what you're destined to be, to do , to have in life.  Yep... THAT story!

Ideally, we would have a story for ourselves that we love.  A story that casts us as the hero, as someone deserving of love, recognition, success and joy.  However, too many of us experience unhappiness, dissatisfaction and sometimes a feeling of worthlessness.  If this sounds familiar, then it just might be time for you to question the story you're telling yourself!

Change your story, change your life  (Anthony Robbins)

Our sense of dissatisfaction stems out of a gap between how we believe that things should be and how they truly are.  Narrow or eliminate this gap and your level of satisfaction and joy increase proportionally.  You need to shift your story though.  Changing your perception of the shoulds in your life (what you should have, be and do) changes the yardstick by which you measure what you currently are, have and do.  Measuring differently gives you different results!

We have all had difficult challenges to face in our lives.  Life can be tough.  The true challenge for us though rests in finding a way to use and learn from the tough moments and in not allowing ourselves to become lost in them.  Sometimes these tough moments impact our story, in ways we didn't anticipate.  Rather than letting these moments create gaps of disillusionment that we fall into and get swallowed up by, shift the story!

We may not have control over everything that life throws our way, but we always have control over how we choose to respond to those moments.  Every time you choose to find a work-around or to push through those challenges, you strengthen your story and create a stronger plot line for yourself.  The stronger you become and believe yourself to be, the more story possibilities that open themselves to you. 

The end of your story doesn't exist yet.  You can't yet know how your story will end.  You are a writer in the process of creating the story of your life though.  Isn't it time that you took control of your script, rather than letting others write it for you?

The Work...

Sometimes we have lost track of our story, of what we want and believe for ourselves.  To get closer to it...

Think about and identify one aspect of your life that you are currently very happy and satisfied with. 

What is it about this that instills in you a sense of happiness?

What is the aspect of your story that it is fulfilling?

Now...  think about and identify an area of your life in which you feel dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

What is it about this that instills you with that sense of unhappiness?

What is the aspect of your story that it is failing to fulfill?

Generally, we have three options for handling our areas of dissatisfaction.  We can...

1. Blame someone/something else - which drives our feelings of victimization
2. Do nothing - which heightens our sense of dissatisfaction and helplessness
3. Change our story and take a different path, gaining control over our lives and our satisfaction

What actions will you take?  Recraft, rewrite your story to better support those new actions and direction.  Given a choice, I will always want my personal life story to end with... and she lived happily ever after.  Why would I ever want to settle for less?



No... we need to learn to say Yes!

Ít's amazing to consider that a small, two-letter word has such control over the way in which we view ourselves and the world, but the word 'NO' is a significant contributor to our failure to achieve as much in our lives as we are capable of and desire.  Research shows us that the average child has heard the word 'no' over 40,000 times by the time they reach the age of 5.  Now... multiply this by the number of times that a child would likely have said no to themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, and we are looking at one of the strongest and most heavily reinforced messages...period.

I recognise that we use the word no with children in an effort to protect them.  'No, don't touch that, it's hot' is not designed to undermine their self-esteem but rather, to prevent them from a potentially nasty burn.  It's a direction given out of love and caring.  However, those no's add up creating, very early in our lives, an over-developed 'protective's ubconscious self.

No... don't take that job, you might fail
No... don't do that, people might laugh
No... don't try that, you might get hurt

95% of our waking hours are spent on autopilot - allowing our subconscious mind to direct us.  Our autopilot does serve a useful purpose for us, preventing us from having to consciously think about everything that we are doing.  We don't have to think about breathing, our subconscious mind takes care of ensuring that we continue to do so.  We don't have to think about 'how' to make our muscles work together to allow us to run, we just decide to run and our subconscious takes care of the rest.  Our subconscious mind then is constantly working and is never at rest.

There are elements of the programming our autopilot has received though, that do not work for us as effectively as others.  Certainly, the impact of all of those No's adds up and has our subconscious mind making choices for us that prove limiting in the long-run, often preventing us from achieving and doing everything that we might.  Instead, we need to reprogram some of our autopilot's scripts, shift our patterns of thinking, to open up new choices and paths.

To start that reprogramming process... refuse to say 'No' for an entire day.  This does not mean that you need to agree to everything anyone else suggests, but it does mean you must find an alternative to 'No'.  For example...

• ... I would prefer something else... instead of No, I don't want it
• ... Please do 'X' ... instead of No, that's wrong
• ... 'X' is more preferable... instead of No, I don't like that
• ... I am unable to... instead of No, not gonna

Keep a list of how many times you slip up over the day (if indeed you do!).  A simple little checkmark on a piece of paper will do, using one side of the page to record the number of  'No's' used and the other side to record each 'Yes'.  You might be surprised by the final number of each, especially since you were trying to avoid saying No.  The one-day experiment goes well?  Try it for a week, then try it for a month!

Think you can?  (hope you said... YES!)